Review

Every band starts out writing pretty uninteresting songs, and it’s expected since they are undeveloped and haven’t had time to blossom their talents. In order to get their name out, a band has two choices: work their asses off touring and promoting until they land some sort of record contract (unless they self-produce already) or record a bunch of demos and send them to every label they know, hoping for some big break. In Ulver’s case, they chose the latter path. However, when mentioned that beginning bands can write low-quality material, this is the feature that makes me wonder how Ulver got signed in the first place.

First of all, raw black metal was obviously the thing to do in Norway during the early 90’s, which gives a reason to why Ulver started this way. This demo was recorded in Fenriz’s mom’s loft (as were many demos of bands in the area), dubbed “Necro Hell” according to Garm…the production is abominable, to put it simply. It’s worse than Transylvanian Hunger, it’s worse than Nattens Madrigal, it’s even worse than Kids Bop, seriously you cannot hear a single note the guitars are playing when distorted, let alone the drums sounding like boxes and kitchen pots for cymbals, and the bass is nonexistent. The vocals are probably the worst performance I’ve heard by anyone ever, reminiscent of the dude from The Leprechaun movie, even the giggling. The cleans are utterly hilarious opera vocals, and do not fit at all. It really doesn’t help that all the lyrics are in Norwegian, because it makes everything sound that much more ridiculous.

Musically, there’s nothing interesting except for Trollskogen, which is an acoustic instrumental, so the sound is pretty bearable. Everything else is beyond average black metal with only two different tempos: mid-paced and the fast-as-we-can-play pace. It’s hard to see how a promoter saw potential in this band, but thank god he did, because Ulver’s future is nothing but quality. This is only worth checking out if you want to see the prelude to Bergtatt…or just for a laugh.

I've listened to a live version of 'Vargnatt' on youtube. I quite liked it actually though it wasn't really that great. I might look into this sometime, 'Bergtatt' is my favourite bm album, and in my top 3 albums ever (sometimes no 1)

Anyways, I see you've been on a bit of an Ulver binge lately (me too hahaha). In terms of production (which you discussed briefly in the review), how does this hold up to Nattens Madrigal (in terms of sloppy production)? All you say is that its worse but I still think NM is pretty bad.

In terms of production (which you discussed briefly in the review), how does this hold up to Nattens Madrigal (in terms of sloppy production)? All you say is that its worse but I still think NM is pretty bad.

the production on Nattens Madrigal is like Wintersun compared to this

and yeah I've been on a huge Ulver binge, plus I want to review Lykantropen Themes soon but I have no idea what the hell it is really

EDIT: nevermind I found the short film, this should be coolThis Message Edited On 12.28.08